The Best Places in Italy

A summer terrace shaded by old trees marks the edge of Florence where the city gives way to Tuscan hills, and Da Bibe has been feeding people from that spot for longer than anyone can comfortably remember. It's a trattoria in the old sense, with cured meats and crostini leading into pici al ragù and the slow-braised beef peposo. The sixth generation runs the place now, which means nobody's fiddling with the recipes.

A glass cabinet near the entrance holds whatever the fishmonger next door landed that morning, and that cabinet is where you should start before you even look at the menu. This is a casual seafood restaurant in Sorrento where the cooking stays out of the way, letting straightforward preparations do the flattering. Ask the staff what came in; they'll steer you better than any printed page will.

A walled medieval town split by the Adda River is an unlikely setting for a restaurant that pairs rustic stone interiors with modern plating, yet here we are. Tables spill under a portico in warmer months, and the kitchen leans into Lombardian cooking, lightening and modernising it without losing the thread. The wine list has been assembled slowly over years, and it shows.

A restaurant where salt cod gets its own dedicated menu, sharing the room with serious meat cookery, is a fairly confident statement of priorities. The chef comes from a family of butchers and spent years cooking in a hill town whose annual festival is devoted entirely to baccalà, so the obsessions here run deep. The space is calm and tucked away from the seafront, the kind of place where you eat what the cook actually believes in.

An 18th-century ceramic stove anchors the dining room at this family-run restaurant in Piacenza's countryside, where the colorful mix of period and vintage decor manages to feel lived-in rather than staged. The kitchen covers both meat and fish, though the fish dishes are what regulars drive out here for. Service is the relaxed, professional kind where staff seem to know everyone and the wine list runs deep enough to keep you at the table longer than planned.

A white-on-white dining room a few blocks from the Jesolo seafront, where the kitchen leans hard into the grill and the catch comes in daily. This is a sit-down seafood restaurant, tablecloths and all, run by a couple who have been at it for decades and still work the floor themselves. In summer, a garden bar softens the formality. The family tends a kitchen garden on Sant'Erasmo, the vegetable island in the Venetian lagoon.

Tucked inside a palazzo hotel in Cannaregio, this creative tasting-menu restaurant is the project of a Spanish chef who decided that Venice needed more Japanese technique in its life. The menu leans into local Venetian ingredients while quietly subverting them, and the walled garden setting makes the whole thing feel like a dinner party only you were told about.

Berkel slicers near the door announce the priorities at this country trattoria tucked into a small Piedmontese hamlet, where local cured meats, freshwater fish, and snails in several forms are the point. The cheese trolley arrives in force, and the cellar leans toward small regional producers without ignoring the rest of Europe. On a grey winter afternoon, with a fire nearby and risotto incoming, the grayness becomes someone else's problem.

A seat overlooking the tourist harbour in Viareggio, this old-school seafood institution has been feeding the city long enough that regulars don't bother consulting the menu. The kitchen handles crustaceans and deep-water catch with quiet confidence, and the spaghetti alla Trabaccolara, a Viareggio recipe built on tomato and fish, is the dish locals will mention unprompted. The room is classic and elegant, the service professional without being stiff.

A family-run restaurant carved into the upper Sassi, with a small terrace and a dining room that feels like someone's home, if someone's home had a serious wine list. The father cooks contemporary Basilicatan food, while mother and daughter run the floor with the easy confidence of people who've been feeding strangers for years. Tasting menus and à la carte both available, which is a civilized way to operate.

A trattoria that has been feeding Cusago locals for decades, with the village's medieval castle visible just outside. The menu splits evenly between fish and meat, and the kitchen takes both seriously enough that neither feels like an afterthought. Two formal dining rooms suit a slow dinner, while the courtyard fills up in summer. Cusago is a short hop from Milan, which is reason enough to point the car west.

A family-run restaurant and small hotel tucked into the foothills just outside Cuneo, where the kitchen runs a short, seasonal menu with a quietly contemporary edge. A younger chef has brought outside training back to the family table, and the result feels local without being stuck. The room has that particular Piedmontese gravity: unhurried, hospitable, and very serious about lunch.

A family-run trattoria on Positano's main drag, Da Vincenzo has been feeding the town long enough that the current chef shares a name with his grandfather, who started the whole thing. The menu leans heavily on fish, the atmosphere is pleasant without trying too hard, and a handful of pavement tables put you right in the middle of the passerby parade. Cocktails from lunch onward suggest nobody here is in a rush to get back to the beach.

A family-run contemporary Sicilian restaurant in lower Modica's central piazza, where the menu leans on the island's ingredients while quietly smuggling in South American influences, a culinary heirloom from a grandfather who came home from Venezuela with ideas. The kitchen reframes those influences through a Sicilian lens, presenting colorful, carefully composed dishes. Tables spill outside in summer, and the service is warm and unhurried.

Stone walls and a terrace looking out over the Tuscan hills make Daniela the natural endpoint of a wander through San Casciano's cobblestone lanes. It's a cozy trattoria on the main square, the kind that keeps things rooted in local tradition, with handmade pastas, wild boar pappardelle, and roasted rabbit alongside a wine list that stays mostly in Tuscany.

The name is dialect for "what a shame," which the restaurant leans into as a gentle dare to stop driving past. It's a secluded little villa outside Mercenasco, the dining room anchored by a fireplace, serving the kind of traditional Piedmontese cooking that makes the Canavese countryside worth the detour. In winter, fritto misto and bagna caoda fill the tables; in warmer months, a terrace pulls the meal outdoors into the green.

Wrought-iron tables spill onto one of Portofino's tiny squares, with the castle-crowned promontory framing the view like someone staged it. This contemporary Italian restaurant is run by the Cerea family, who also oversee the three-Michelin-starred Da Vittorio in Bergamo, so the kitchen takes the food seriously even when the scenery is doing most of the heavy lifting. Book ahead; the tables are few and the square is famous.

The Cerea family, who built their reputation in Bergamo, opened this contemporary Italian restaurant tucked behind a Louis Vuitton flagship in the fashion district. The room splits between a buzzy ground floor and a quieter mezzanine, and the look is elegant bistro rather than runway-adjacent minimalism. The menu runs Italian classics reinterpreted with a light modern hand, plus a chef's tasting option for the table that came to commit.

A family-run seafood restaurant in the historic center of Palmi where the catch of the day arrives as carpaccio dressed with house-made vinaigrette, and desserts are announced aloud at the table rather than printed on a card. The menu leans Mediterranean and fish-forward, though a small meat contingent gets its own section for anyone who wandered in by accident. The cannolo apparently shows up regardless.

A former monastery just outside Tropea, now home to a tasting-menu restaurant where the citrus fruit on your plate may have been growing in the garden an hour before. The kitchen works through contemporary Calabrian cooking across multi-course menus, leaning on vegetables and produce from the property. The wine list keeps it regional, and there's a bar if you'd rather start with a cocktail than a pairing.

A self-taught chef who leaves the kitchen to talk you through his food is either very confident or very charming, and this intimate contemporary restaurant in a quiet corner of Busto Arsizio suggests both. Pastel interiors, no parking drama, and a menu built on fermentation and measured acidity, Italian at its core with quiet nods toward Asia. Tasting menus or à la carte, your call.

A short regional menu rooted in the Marche, tucked into the old upper town behind a medieval tower. The team keeps the selection tight, leaning on whatever came from the market that morning, so a few fish dishes appear and disappear with the week. The boned caramelised rabbit, a riff on a classic local preparation, gives a sense of the kitchen's thinking: familiar flavors, quietly reconsidered. A neighborhood trattoria for people who actually live here.

Tucked between the Uffizi and Ponte Vecchio, this small contemporary Italian restaurant earns its location without leaning on it. The room reads quietly chic without trying, and the kitchen applies the same logic to cooking: Italian ingredients handled with restraint, meant to settle rather than dazzle. A well-chosen cheese and charcuterie spread rounds things out, and the all-Italian wine list gives the Supertuscans plenty of room to make their case.

The open kitchen greets you at the door at this old-school Florentine trattoria, which is either charming or alarming depending on how you feel about watching your lunch happen in real time. Pici, pappa al pomodoro, a proper bistecca, cantucci to finish: the menu is a short tour of Tuscan cooking done without fuss. Book well ahead, because the regulars have claimed their spots and are not moving.

Stone walls and a terrace at the foot of a medieval church set the scene at this country restaurant in a hilltop village on the Lazio-Umbria border. The cooking leans into local ingredients without fussing over them, which turns out to be harder than it sounds. Small-producer Lazio wines round out a meal that reads like the region explaining itself quietly. The kind of place you find by accident and then tell everyone about.

The wood paneling in the more romantic of the two Stube dining rooms has been here since the 13th century, which puts the candlelight in perspective. This is a family-run restaurant in a private house in the South Tyrolean hills, where the chef works Mediterranean influences and a strong lean toward fish into the local Alto Adige framework. A summer terrace and a handful of guestrooms round things out if you'd rather not drive back down.

The dining room inside the Hotel de la Ville faces the Villa Reale and leans into a clubby, British-inflected elegance that feels oddly right for Monza. This is a sit-down restaurant with two tasting menus, one tracing the chef's Campanian roots and one reworking Lombard tradition, though you can order freely from either. Vegetables come from the hotel's own organic garden, which is the kind of detail that sounds like marketing until the food arrives.

Nino Di Costanzo, a chef with multiple Michelin stars to his name, runs this fine dining room inside a hotel on one of Naples' grand central thoroughfares. The menu leans into Neapolitan identity, with dishes named in dialect and plated in a quietly modern register. Local art hangs in a softly lit, minimalist space that earns its formality without being stiff. The kind of dinner where the service knows exactly when to appear and when to disappear.

A pasta producer from Gragnano opened this counter-style pasta bar facing Castel Nuovo, and the menu runs to 126 varieties, which sounds excessive until you're staring it down and can't decide. You sit at a long counter watching the kitchen work through the whole catalog, classics alongside combinations you wouldn't have thought to request. Portions à la carte are generous; a tasting menu covers more ground in smaller plates if you want the full tour.

The summer terrace looks out over the Sassi, which is a view that tends to make people order another glass. Inside a carefully restored old palazzo, this is a tasting-menu restaurant built around three named journeys through modern cooking and the traditions of Basilicata, though you can also pick individual courses. The wine list leans local without going parochial, and the service has the rare quality of seeming interested in you.

The drive up the slopes of Mt Etna to reach this creative fine dining restaurant inside the Villa Neri is half the experience. The chef builds tasting menus around Sicilian ingredients, sometimes reaching for complexity but never losing the thread of the island. The wine list leans hard into Etna labels, including the property's own, which pairs neatly with the olive oil they also press themselves.

Charcoal smoke threads through almost every course here, including dessert, which tells you immediately what kind of cooks run this small seafood restaurant near piazza Zama. A husband-and-wife team, him cooking and her running the room, they bring real technique and the occasional Basque detour to Rome. Tables fill fast on evenings, so book ahead.

Tufa stone walls from the fifteenth century form the dining room at this Sicilian restaurant tucked into Ortigia, a short walk from the cathedral. The kitchen takes traditional island cooking and tilts it somewhere personal, the kind of place that's been around forever without feeling like a museum. Candlelight, period wood, wrought iron, and a menu that apparently ends better than it begins, if the inspector's nudge about dessert is any guide.

Portraits and sketches of opera singers line every wall of this intimate hotel dining room inside the Grand Hotel et de Milan, where Verdi himself was once a long-term guest. The kitchen turns out Milanese and Italian cooking with a Mediterranean lean, shaped by celebrated Neapolitan chef Gennaro Esposito in a consulting role. Jackets optional, but the room suggests you might want to try.

A narrow, low-lit dining room on a quiet Cagliari street, where the menu moves between clean Italian classics and the occasional sharp pivot, like a tuna carpaccio that borrows Japanese teriyaki and anchors it with Sardinian tomato chutney. The kitchen reads as a contemporary Italian restaurant that knows when to stay traditional and when not to. Small, considered, and not trying to be anything other than what it is.

The aged-fish tasting menu is the calling card at this creative modern restaurant tucked into the old center of a small Lake Garda village. The two chefs run both the kitchen and the floor, turning out Mediterranean-leaning plates that move between land, sea, and freshwater with equal comfort. In good weather, tables spill outside under a pergola ringed by walnut trees, which is a very nice problem to have.

The charcoal grill has been the main attraction at this old-school South Tyrolean restaurant since long before anyone eating there was born. The Schmieder family has run it for decades, and the smoke-kissed meats are still the reason to come, though the kitchen also moves through Italian seafood and land dishes with quiet confidence. A family member curates the wine list personally, which shows. It sits just off the Bolzano highway, convenient in the way that only truly committed restaurants can be.

Five tables, no printed menu, and a Roman chef whose cooking wanders freely between Mexico City and Southeast Asia without stopping to explain itself. Ego is an intimate tasting-room experience in the Ostiense quarter where you pick your number of courses and hand the rest to the kitchen. The front-of-house doubles as sommelier, and the wine pairings by the glass are as considered as the food. Book well ahead.

Tucked into a small larch wood on the road to Passo Tre Croci, this agriturismo sits among the Dolomites and runs its own stable on the property. The restaurant leans hard into Alpine tradition: house-made charcuterie and aged cheeses share the table with creamy butter, local herbs, and berries foraged nearby. The kind of place where the ingredient list is basically a hike you could take after lunch.

The building itself was Uruguay's pavilion at Expo 2015, which explains why a steakhouse in Origgio has mountain views and architectural ambition. It's a South American grill focused on Uruguayan beef, with a live parilla fire burning in full sight of the dining room. The meat traces back to certified Uruguayan farms, and the parillero works it slowly. Uruguayan and Italian wines handle the rest.

Wooden tables, soft lighting, and chamber music drifting through a small dining room in Latina: Elementi is the kind of quietly confident restaurant that doesn't need to announce itself. The menu moves between land and sea, with house-marinated anchovies and a duck breast that shows real precision. The cooking has a personal stamp, rooted in the flavors of Lazio and the Mediterranean, and the whole evening feels unhurried in the best possible way.

Tortello stuffed with Neapolitan ragù is the tell: the chef grew up in Campania and cooks in Emilia, and the menu lands squarely between both regions. This hotel restaurant in a central park has its own entrance and tall windows onto the greenery, which gives it the feel of a standalone place. The kitchen covers meat, fish, and vegetarian with equal attention, and the pasta alone makes a case for lingering over a second course.

A wine shop steps from the Colosseum that quietly turns into a proper dinner spot once the sun goes down. Lunch is casual, guided by a blackboard and a daily special; evenings open into more intimate rooms behind the visible kitchen, where the chef works seasonal ingredients with real technique. The wine list splits its loyalty evenly between Italy and France, which feels like the right diplomatic move given the ownership.